davidjewlian

…if you thought it was, I bet you were sorely disappointed when you got here and read my crock of shite.

But your first entries have been a-tweet with tech references and topics!

There’s a simple answer to that: it’s my current fascination. Last week I made a choice to start a website for a couple reasons (explained below). Then I decided to see what Twitter was about. Then Dailybooth came along. And now I’m head-over-heels drowning in social media and technology.

That and I got a new MacBook a few months ago and I lurve it

The truth is I get obsessed over things easily. At one point in my life I even had a failed blog about it, called “LesNouveaux.” Don’t bother looking for it, it was short-lived and incredibly underwhelming. That said, there have been past obsessions. I have an immense amount of scarves during my knitting phase. I have an unordinarily large library of Tori Amos songs (and my mother says I breathe heavily when I listen to a particular one). I know a lot about customizing a PC computer to look like a Mac (or anything else). And more than a lot of other things in life, I love strengthening my skills at Trivial Pursuit. That means a lot of aimless Internet research. But the word “research” makes it seem far drier than as I experience it.

And that means this blog will change focus over time.

But don’t you have to have a focus?

To be successful, yes, probably. The best blogs seem to have focus. Take, for instance, Brazen Careerist. AdScam. Engadget. TUAW.

But blogging isn’t about success, is it? There are many millions of blogs out there, but only a few are read with any regularity or with any monetary success. This copyblogger post explains, quite sadly, why you cannot make money blogging.

My blogging is for me. I said before I began this website for a couple reasons. There were two reasons:

1. To gain some digital technology experience. At work, I have been helping re-launch a website for our company. I don’t have a digital background. I went to school for marketing and business and only had passing experience with HTML coding, absolutely none with further forms of programming. When I was thrown into this project, people began asking me about PHP, XML, and all other sorts of abbreviations that made no sense to me. I thought, the best way to gain this experience and not sound like a doofus would be to get some experience and be able to play around with these things not under the watchful gaze of my more experienced colleagues.

2. To work on my written communication skills. Again at work (see a common theme in my life), I recently had a performance evaluation and one of the most striking comments was that I need to work on my written communication skills. Copywriting, memo writing… all of it. I don’t think I’m all that bad, but I know I can use vast improvement.

Those are my reasons for beginning this site. No overarching message, no focused theme. Which makes me think, makes me hope, that maybe blogs don’t need a theme. iJustine doesn’t seem to have one except her and her Macs (love the site, watch obsessively–but not in a creepy way don’t worry). And while the Huffington Post focuses on current events, they’re not just about foreign policy, not just about celebrity, it’s news in general.

The thing that each one of them has, I’ve come to realize, is a kernel.

A kernel…!!

Chris Brogan has a great post at his site here about blogs and kernels and how you don’t need a focus, you just need a kernel, a point of differentiation, a purpose of sorts.

Now, I hate to break it to you, but I haven’t found mine yet. Seeing from the last couple posts, maybe it’s obscenely long posts. But I like to think that this blog is mainly about fascination, with a small dose of just plain daily happenstance. I’m fascinated with social media now, yes. But I’m also fascinated with Parkour, and Muay Thai. With advertising and psychology. And I’m completely enamored with science and celebrity. So perhaps all of those topics will show up here at one point or another. Perhaps you’ll get to read all about what I’m interested in, and I hope some things in which you are interested as well.

For now, I know a few things: I began this blog to write, and that is what I’ll do. I began this blog to learn, and that is what I’ll do. And I hope you enjoy.

DS